BLACK

(25) Untold

EDITED

My mouth was dry when I woke up, the air bitter around my tongue. I was snuggled into a stale pillow, hair tangled in tresses under my back. The sunlight barely makes it past the trailer's blinds, gently touching my eyelids as I blinked into reality.

A crash sounded from the corner of the room, my eyes darting to see a shadow cross the bathroom doorway. I get a headrush as I begin to sit up, remembering last night and yesterday's events. I heaved as I sat my back against the headboard, chest aching. I snaked the blankets over my cooling body, feeling the temperature drop immensely. I yawn, licking my lips and looking over to the blinds again. I felt sick, empty. The feelings I had been taking pleasure in, but this time it felt different. I no longer wanted to loathe in this abandonment and cruelty. I yearned for something of content, like the warm sunlight beyond the blinds on my skin, or something like . . . like –

The porcelain sink clanked with a metal, and I stopped my train of thought. My heart beat sped up as his movements were slow, and I focused on the growth of his shadow over the floor.

Last night, had only been the beginning of the head rush. I was unprepared for any of that, and was in high strung anticipation of what would come next. He shifted back into a man, and through the nights darkness I hadn't caught a glimpse of what he looked like. I found him screaming in the hallway, face soaked with tears of an unfortunate man. He was the devil, an evil monster, and I faced him without vision, in his weakest, most vulnerable state.

My fear to see him again wasn't from pity, I could never forgive a man like him for all of things he had done to me, no matter how right things could become in the future. What he has done to me, even before I knew him, had taken that option off of the table.

If he was still in human form, I knew not to give into anything, no matter how deceiving. From all of my past mates, I knew though they had two different shapes, both were spiritually connected inside. One could not choose between two beings. One could not blame his temper on his shifter, and the shifter could not blame his humanity on the human. Thus, creating the shifter breed. A blend of an entwined, tortured soul. Learning through the physical pain of shifts, and the mental struggle of morality.

I hesitated to meet his eyes, to see their human colour instead of his shifter's burning amber. I held my breath, for I was saved from making eye contact with him when his body came stumbling out, back to me, and hands slamming against the wall. His nudity surprised me, my cheeks instantly flushing, but it made sense after he returned from shifter form. My eyes were still small with exhaustion, the glue of my sleep collected in my corners, but their vision was clear. As he heaved against that wall, stressing with his back to me, my eyes wandered. Over his shoulders were the marks of burnt skin, red and raw tortured flesh. On top of them came scars, long and gruel like the slashes of a shifter. Though they had the shine of cellophane, the white gashes still rippled highly above, unforgiving and certainly not forgetful. My breath was caught in my throat as the marks continued, all over his body, a full circle I imagined as some slashes shaped across his stomach and out of my sight. The burns continued, spotted in ghastly colour a like honey combs. They stretched over his shoulders, down his haunches, across his biceps. He was beaten, battered, like he'd fought millions of battles, lived forever in the war of shifters, but his hair colour was pure blond. No grey. In the patches were his skin grew warmly, it was soft and fresh. No wrinkles. No age spots. He was young. Yet he looked like he'd been through a new battle everyday for the past forty years.

I sat up further, beginning to lean forward from the bed, feet itching to go to him, but every other organ in my body repelled. His spine stuck out more than I was used to on any other shifter I'd seen. He was clearly unhealthy, evidence prominent as ribs protruded up his sides, the skin over his stomach concave and stretched across his hipbones thinly. Muscle in his quads was receeding drastically, and harsh, bloody bruises littered his body like a garbage sight. The worst was his leg, just pure green and blue, the veins dead or dying. He let out a wretched cry, throwing his shoulder into the wall, and making the trailer jump.